DEVASTATION COMES WITH FURY, OR SEEPS SUDDENLY

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Nature was insistent this year in rudely reminding Americans that there are vast forces over which they have no control: A major earthquake, a killer hurricane, tornados and the most perverse reminder of them all, that humans are imperfect creatures who, for all their cleverness, are capable of spilling a vast quantity of oil that befouled hundreds of miles of Alaskan shoreline and killed countless scores of hapless birds and sea otters.

Of the 67 killed in the earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area Oct. 17, most died in the collapse of the double-decker Int. Hwy. 880 in Oakland. But the quake, which delayed the 1989 World Series between the two Bay Area teams, also devastated the historic Marina District of San Francisco, setting off a fire reminiscent of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. South of the city the quake flattened the shopping district of Santa Cruz and damaged Watsonville so badly that hundreds of its residents ended up living in a tent city. Fortunately, this quake, which measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, was mild compared with the 1906 quake-and presumably, to the Big One still predicted for California. On Nov. 15, a powerful tornado swept across Huntsville, Ala., killing 17 and injuring more than 400.

Hurricane Hugo crashed through the Caribbean Sept. 17, then smashed ashore in South Carolina, tossing boats around like toys, wiping away beachfront developments, shutting down cities for days, and flattening the houses of thousands of the rural poor who have yet to recover fully from the blow. The federal government sent billions in disaster aid to help rebuild the devastation in both the Carolinas and California.

Humanity`s great insult to nature came in Alaska, where the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground March 24, spilling more than 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine beauty of Prince William Sound, coating beaches, birds and animals with foul goo. The level of the controversy that followed was exceeded only by the slow progress of the cleanup, suspended because the harsh Alaskan winter set in. Naturalists predict that it will be decades before wildlife there returns to any semblance of pre-spill conditions.